


Sweet as Heaven

by Quixcy



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M, Post-Canon, Saving Each Other, Short & Sweet, There is a death, When an angel and a demon meet, but also a kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 20:32:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19180873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quixcy/pseuds/Quixcy
Summary: Crowley and Aziraphale had met once before—before Eden, before the Fall—and it never mattered. Until now.





	Sweet as Heaven

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place after the TV series, so spoilers ahoy! I love these good boys. They’re such good boys. They’re such sweet boys. The best boys.

 

Crowley wasn’t the type of demon who really cared about food. There were others who tempted humans with gluttony or starvation, but he never really liked playing those sorts of games. He didn’t really like eating. It was something that was a tad too human.

Now drinking on the other hand, he could definitely get behind.

“There should be a merlot from 1908 somewhere on the top shelf,” Aziraphale was saying as he tidied up the back area of the bookstore. It was filled with all different number of dusty tomes, all of which Crowley couldn’t give a single fuck about, but the angel liked them so they weren’t all so bad.

He’d even read one recently—about some sort of world on the back of a migrating galactic tortoise, which seemed very much preposterous, and Crowley was a little bit miffed that he hadn’t thought to actually do that when he helped create Alpha Centauri.

“You know how I hate merlot,” he complained, grabbing the bottle of wine anyway, because he’d slog through it if the angel liked it, and turned back toward the study—only to find that they weren’t alone anymore.

He froze.

Michael had Aziraphale by the hair, head pulled back, serrated butter knife pressed to his throat. The same butter knife Aziraphale had been using a moment ago to cut the crepe he had Postmate’d from his favorite London restaurant.

See? This was why Crowley hated food. Because to eat you used weapons of murder.

He raised his hands, bottle of wine still in one of them. “Hold on now, we're haven’t done a thing.”

“You tricked us,” Michael snarled. “The trial wasn’t fair.”

That struck a nerve with Crowley, and he couldn’t really put his finger on why. “Since when have things been fair? Since when has any of this been fair?”

“You both deserve proper punishments!” The self-righteous prick demanded.

“Did She say that, or are you doling out these proper punishments now?”

“Silence!” Her gaze crackled with lightning, her wings flexing from her back, large and wonderfully white.

For a moment Crowley remembered his own wings, how they had once been white, too, the brilliant white of new stars. He had matched the stars in Alpha Centauri to them, he loved the color so. (Also, he was just a little bit vain.) But now they were black as soot, black as pavement, black as—well.

As sin, as the metaphor goes.

A constantly reminder of the question he should have never asked, the answer he should have never pursued.

He still remembered the Fall. He remembered it worst in the moments just before dawn, when the night was at its darkest. He remembered how Michael had sauntered up to him, and grabbed him by the side of his face. He remembered the look in her eyes as she whispered,

— **“You are nothing more than a snake”** —

and pushed him off the edge of the world he knew, down and down into the pit where the prince of Hell had fallen.

He remembered how the wind swirled around him, tearing at him, ripping away the parts of him that made him good and whole, and left him hollow and strange and terrifying, Michael’s words rebounding in his head.

You are nothing more than a snake.

You are nothing more.

You are nothing.

A snake.

And he felt the words burrow into those parts of him that were gone. Those parts of him that had been shorn clean, and they changed him. Those words changed him like a parasite changes its host. Like kudzu changes a tree. Until there were only the words Michael had spoken, and the echo of a hollow angel.

Crowley looked at Michael now, and the memory burned fresh, and he hated it. He gritted his teeth and said, “Let him go.”

“He deserves punishment—as do you,” Michael snapped.

“Then punish me.”

“Oh, I will.”

In a crack of lightning, the scenery shifted: from bookstore to—to—to a church. For Hell’s sake, why a fucking church? The pews were empty, the steepled cathedral stretching up into darkness, the rafters creaky, the stained glass windows hauntingly colorful in the full moon, spilling a kaleidoscope of dull light onto the pulpit and the fountain, the stone statue of an angel atop it, behind.

He tensed, waiting for the crack of pain to strike through his center, but…there was nothing. His feet didn’t burn. That was odd. But perhaps it was just the expensive soles of his new shoes. They wouldn’t keep the fury of heaven out for long, he feared.

Michael didn’t seem to notice. She was too busy herding Aziraphale around behind the pulpit, and the fountain of holy water there. Ah, now Crowley understood.

Aziraphale struggled against her. “I—I don’t understand why you’re doing this, Michael. We haven’t—we haven’t done anything, have we Crowley?”

Other than defy both heaven and hell and thwart the end of the world and then tricking both heaven and hell into thinking they had become something more than what they had been… “…No?”

“Lies!” Michael snapped. “I will not hear your lies. I will not hear your insolence. Demon, you have tainted him. You have destroyed his light!”

Crowley scoffed. “I appreciate the credit, but Aziraphale did it all on his own.”

For his part, Aziraphale looked absolutely mortified. “I am not tainted!”

“Think of it as a nice seasoning.”

Aziraphale blinked, not sure whether it was an insult or a compliment. Little bit of both, perhaps, if Crowley wanted to be truthful. He shrugged in the angel’s direction.

Michael went on, oblivious to their exchange. “I know your ways, demon. You are all the same. You can never be like us again.”

That surprised him. “Be like you? Why’d I want to do something stupid like that?”

“All you demons want the same. You rioted because you felt you wanted more. You always feel like you want more. You’re never satisfied,” Michael snapped. Aziraphale tried to struggle his way out of his superior’s grip, but Crowley knew it was a lost cause. Aziraphale was good at a great many things, but none of them were physical.

Well, hardly none were.

Michael pressed the blade sharper against Aziraphale’s neck. Crowley could try to miracle the butter knife out of Michael’s grip, but then Michael might just miracle Aziraphale somewhere else—without him. He had to think this through slowly, and he did just that—think.

It was mortifying to think that he had to fight an angel wielding a butter knife. Michael could’ve at least made it a little more difficult.

Michael moved back toward the fountain, until her heels bumped up against the lip.

“We both know holy water won’t harm him,” Crowley said slowly to Michael. “Well, except for maybe his coat.”

“Please don’t ruin my coat,” Aziraphale added quietly, his eyes wide as the knife pressed deep enough to draw blood. A droplet rolled down his neck, dangerously close to staining his perfectly white coat he’d had for—how long? 180 years?

Too long, Crowley imagined.

But then Michael muttered a word—a word that no angel should know, a word that only demons did, the kind of word to summon the flames of—

Well.

Things certainly became a lot more dire.

In that moment, the demon didn’t think. He really didn’t need to; he had thought for the last six thousand years. There was no more time for thinking. Or questioning. Or wishing that he was someone—anyone—other than who he had to be. Because somewhere in the span of those six thousand years, he stopped wishing at all. Not because it was futile, because he coveted the light and sky and the wide, wide universe, but—

But because, with Aziraphale, he was good just the way he was.

He was good.

My, what a daring thought.

“Stop!” Crowley cried, lunging for the serrated butter knife. His fingers closed around the blade as the flames of hell burst around it, flaring bright, burning, searing in a way that only fire made from hate could burn. The skin of Aziraphale’s neck began to blister, and he gave a yelp as Crowley forced Michael’s hand away, the only thing that mattered.

The important thing.

What was seemingly less important—but perhaps more? At least in the mind of a demon—should have been the nearness to the holy water fountain as it burbled and gurgled and looked so pleasantly serene.

It looked so very serene right until the moment Michael grabbed Crowley by the arm, letting go of the knife, because it had been a trick all along, and tossed him headfirst into the fountain.

One moment there was Aziraphale looking frightened, and then horrified as he realized what was happening—good God why did the last glance Crowley would ever have of the angel be one of horror?—and the next there was the dark depths of the fountain. The water rushed over him so quickly he didn’t even have time to scream.

But perhaps that was for the best.

Because he did not want Aziraphale’s last memory of him to be one of him screaming in pain.

He at least wanted to go out sauntering.

Vaguely downward, as it were.

 

***

 

“NO!” The word ripped from Aziraphale’s mouth the moment the water swallowed Crowley whole. He waited for the water to ripple, for the demon to burst through, for him to grab him by the arm and haul him out of the water—hopefully not in pieces.

But there was nothing.

The water stilled.

A strange prickling burned at the edges of his eyes. “What—what did you do?” He asked, and then turned to Michael. “Why?”

Michael stared at him in alarm. “Are you crying, Aziraphale? For a demon?”

“He was my friend! He was—” The words lodged in his throat.

Because what was Crowley to him? Six thousand years is such a long time for friendship, and admittedly they hadn’t been exactly friends the entire time, but they had never been enemies, either. They had never fought each other, never battled, never warred for the same lost soul.

For six thousand years they had orbited each other, two planets around the same sun, always the close but never colliding.

“He corrupted you, brother,” Michael said, leveling the burning butter knife against him. “Now quit your foolish nonsense and return to heaven. You will be trialed. You will be unmade. And you will return—better this time. You will return only with God’s light.”

But what was light without a shadow? All light came from something that burned, from something that withered, from something sacrificed. In this case: him, whole.

And if he died, then so would the memory of Crowley. Both of them unmade as if they never existed. Unmade as if their existence was nothing more than a blemish on some glorious, ineffable plan.

But that was the thing about ineffable plans—you didn’t know them.

And Aziraphale was finally—and thoroughly—too tired to give a shit about it.

“No,” he replied stoutly.

The archangel grated her teeth. “No?”

“As I said: no.”

“Very well,” replied Michael. “You will be ended here—Gabriel will understand. Sometimes, rabid dogs can’t be saved.”

Just as she was about to aim her flaming, hellish butter knife toward his heart and stake him through like some cartoonish vampire hunter, arms wrapped around the archangel from behind, and with a surprised lurch, drew her back into the fountain. Michael kicked and thrashed, the fountain rippling with the waves, but a shadow held her down beneath the water. The shadow held her for a breath.

For another.

For longer that Aziraphale liked.

Until Michael’s kicks became twitches, and the last of her air bubbled up from her mouth, and then she lay still under the water, and moved no more. A quietness crept through the church, the kind of silence he had not heard in eons—the kind of silence where he knew he wasn’t alone.

The shadow stood, shaking the water off of his hands, and for a second—a flash—Aziraphale thought he saw an angel standing over the lifeless corpse of Michael, soaked clean through in holy water, his crimson hair bright like a sunrise, his eyes the color of melted ocher, and something nibbled at the back of Aziraphale’s memory, something from eons ago, before Eden, before the Fall.

A memory of that angel, fiery red hair and soft eyes, looking at the plans for a world for Her newest creation—humans. Aziraphale hadn’t known his name then; they had been stationed on opposite ends of Heaven. They rarely had an opportunity to meet.

“Free will, what a concept,” the redheaded angel had said. “What a glorious thought.”

“Glorious? Free will is a test,” Aziraphale reminded him. “We have purpose. We have duty. We serve. Why would you want anything else?”

“That’s a silly question,” the fellow angel had muttered, soft like a sigh, the edges of his words…bitter?

Aziraphale didn’t understand. He ruffled his feathers agitatedly. “What more is there?”

The redheaded angel had cocked his head then, and the barest shadow of a smile crossed his lips. “Now that, angel, is a good question.”

How Aziraphale could have forgotten that, he didn’t know, and he felt quite betrayed with his rather spot-on memory. He had met Crowley before, long before he was Crowley, long ago when he was…

The demon kicked the drowned body, and it floated gently to the surface, a mannequin without any features—a body no longer viable. Michael had gone back to heaven.

“He’ll be back, I suspect,” said Crowley, finally turning to him, and froze. “Angel, are you—are you crying?”

Yes, okay. Yes he was crying and yes it was a little bit mortifying, but for a moment there he had thought that Crowley had been unmade to save him, and for a moment more he remembered having met him in Heaven, and he both hated himself for being weak enough to need protecting, and he hated that he had forgotten Crowley before the Fall, and angels never hated.

Well, that was a lie.

Angels hated demons.

Though, Aziraphale was crying for the exact opposite reason.

He quickly wiped away his tears. “You didn’t need to kill her,” he said, trying to hint that he hadn’t been crying for Crowley at all, but for Michael, and somehow that made things worse.

“Oh, no, because talking was working very well,” Crowley scoffed in reply, climbing out of the fountain. He was dripping from head to toe, his immaculate hair stuck to his head, his black suit as good as ruined. He looked down at himself, muttering about needing another one, when Aziraphale did the strangest thing—

He touched Crowley’s shoulder, just to make sure he was real.

He was.

And that just made the tears come again, and this time he couldn’t lie about why he was crying. Crowley stared at him, yellow snake eyes wide in surprise. Then he pursed his lips, and raised his hands to the angel’s face, and wiped the tears away with his thumbs.

“No need for that. We’re fine, see? They haven’t gotten us yet,” the demon tried to soothe.

“You should’ve died. You should been dead,” Aziraphale replied. “How—how are you—how are you not?”

Crowley’s hands lingered on the sides of his face, his thumbs no longer brushing away tears, but softly tracing his cheekbones. “I don’t know,” he admitted, and Aziraphale thought that very odd, because Crowley rarely admitted to not knowing. “But I think…”

“Think what?”

Instead of a word, Crowley answered with a movement, an action—

A kiss.

It was brief, and soft, and stubborn. Like two stars briefly passing each other's orbit, there and then gone again, but the feeling of it lingered like sugar on the back of his molars.

“Free will,” the demon whispered, his lips hovering over Aziraphale’s, breath hot against his mouth. “What a concept.”

“Indeed,” the angel replied, and kissed him again, the taste of the demon was almost as sweet as the crepes he loved so dearly.

Sweet as sin.

Or, perhaps, not sin at all.

Perhaps, he tasted a little of heaven.


End file.
